


the wild hunt

by akaiiko



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: All About That Aesthetique, Alternate Universe - Fae, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:06:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26689387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaiiko/pseuds/akaiiko
Summary: Deep in the dark woods, Keith finds and fights for his true love.Much later, in his fifteenth year, the horn called him again. Alone on the trapline for the first time, there was no one to sing the horn’s echo from his ears. The woods spread before him. The power of the hunt tasted like blood on his tongue. The wind pushed him on. Keith ran so fleetly it felt like flying.Just before he crossed the threshold a hand caught the back of his jerkin. Snarling, he writhed and slashed out with his mother’s knife as he was lifted off the ground like a scruffed kitten. All fight died as he was turned to face the creature holding him.The Lord of the Hunt was tall and powerfully built. Instead of a crown, he bore the antlers of a mature bull elk. Dark hair hung into eyes the clear grey of a winter morning. A quiver was strapped across his bare chest. An unstrung bow was gripped in his free hand. When he spoke, his voice carried the depths of forests and the howl of wolves and the rumble of mountain avalanches. “The horn isn’t for you, little raven. Not yet.”
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 178





	the wild hunt

**Author's Note:**

> another fic from the _shape of sheith_ zine. this time, from the nsfw mini zine. it's basically just Aesthetique (TM) and Porn (TM) but i still like it.

It’s his nineteenth year, long past when he ought to have begun courting one of the local girls. Other boys catch mud and sometimes fists for waiting too long. No one would dare try as much with Keith.

They all know the stories of how his mother went into the woods to scout and came back with a babe in arms. They’ve all seen the gleam of raven’s feathers in his hair and the way the wind comes to his whistle. They all guess the truth of his origins, are glad that he keeps to himself, though they’ll bargain easily enough for the skins he brings from his traps and hunts to woo their own lady loves.

Autumn comes late and gilds the leaves to fire. He walks the trap lines early one morning, a week after the day of his birth, and his lungs burn with the chill air. It’s a poor haul—only a few hares and a single pine marten.

The marten is still alive when he finds it. It hunches in the back of the cage, black eyes glossy and nose twitching. One marten won’t account for much in the village, and the fur traders won’t be back through for months yet. Keith huffs out a sigh as he frees it. It disappears into the thick underbrush with a flick of its bushy tail.

Settled on his haunches, at the end of their line, he resets the trap. It’s there that he hears the eerie sound of a huntsman’s horn. The sound carries on the wind, ruffling the raven’s feathers in his dark locks.

High and piercing, it hooks somewhere beneath his collarbone and _tugs_. Keith is on his feet and three steps forward before he realizes what is happening. His mother’s knife is already in his hand. His fingers itch for the warm weight of a bow and the soothing rasp of fletching. Only a lifetime of his mother’s warnings halt his feet. Still his muscles tense, ready to burst into motion and join the hunt.

Wildness follows him home. Keith feels it in the way the wind teases at him, in the sharp tang of decay beneath his boots, in the ache of his bones that urges him to _run_.

Like she senses it, his mother waits for him in the doorway of their small cabin with her scarred arms folded. “You followed the entire trapline,” she says. Some might take it for a question, but he knows it’s a statement.

“Yeah,” he says. “Only got a few hares for it.”

Krolia’s golden eyes narrow. She steps forward, and he’s not surprised when she grips his chin between her calloused fingers and asks: “That’s not all you found out there, is it?”

The two of them make a pair. Both absurdly beautiful, with high cheekbones and proud mouths and lean bodies made for surviving the woods. Still his mother is wholly human. And Keith… Keith is not, has never been, will never be.

“No,” he admits.

Gentling, she releases him and takes the brace of hares from his shoulder. Their bodies are cool and only just starting to lose their death stiffness. “Let’s get these cleaned,” she says. Command and absolution in one.

For an hour they work side by side. Skinning the hares, removing the offal, preparing the meat. It’s bloody, steady work. They’ve done this together for years. Part of him aches to think they might not do it together much longer. Keith waits until his mother has put down a knife to empty to offal bucket before he says what he knows he must. “The Wild Hunt called for me.”

“I know.” Krolia runs a fingertip over the soft ear of one hare. “I always knew they would.” Picking up her knife again, Krolia begins work on the last of the hares. “Don’t be foolish, when you go, and don’t be cruel.”

* * *

The Wild Hunt has called him twice before.

In his eighth year, the first year his mother allowed him on the trail with her, he heard the high trill of the horn and went running before he could understand why. Krolia caught him on the edge of the woods. Her sturdy arms wrapped around him and she sang human lullabies until that haunting cry bled from his ears.

“You must not follow the horn,” she said, when he’d stopped trembling. Her thumbs wiped at his tears and tenderly rubbed the arch of his cheekbones. “They cannot have you yet. You are still mine alone.”

“Whose horn was that?” he asked.

Krolia’s jaw clenched. “The Wild Hunt.”

Much later, in his fifteenth year, the horn called him again. Alone on the trapline for the first time, there was no one to sing the horn’s echo from his ears. The woods spread before him. The power of the hunt tasted like blood on his tongue. The wind pushed him on. Keith ran so fleetly it felt like flying.

Just before he crossed the threshold a hand caught the back of his jerkin. Snarling, he writhed and slashed out with his mother’s knife as he was lifted off the ground like a scruffed kitten. All fight died as he was turned to face the creature holding him.

The Lord of the Hunt was tall and powerfully built. Instead of a crown, he bore the antlers of a mature bull elk. Dark hair hung into eyes the clear grey of a winter morning. A quiver was strapped across his bare chest. An unstrung bow was gripped in his free hand. When he spoke, his voice carried the depths of forests and the howl of wolves and the rumble of mountain avalanches. “The horn isn’t for you, little raven. Not yet.”

“Then why did it call me?”

With a quiet sigh, the Lord put him down. “Because one day it will be meant for you, and the fae are not known for their patience.”

Keith tipped his head back and realized that the Lord was even taller than he had thought. Taller, yes, and broader. Cheeks flushing with a dull heat he didn’t quite understand, he challenged, “It’s your horn, isn’t it?”

The Lord stilled. Enough so that Keith remembered, distantly, all the tales of what happened to foolish mortals who dared too greatly in the matters of the fae. Then the Lord’s hand, still at Keith’s neck, slid up to cup his cheek. It was large and warm and filled Keith with a sense of feral longing. “Patience, little raven,” he said. “You’ll belong to the dark woods soon enough.”

After, Keith could not recall how he returned home, only that he did so safely and with the day’s haul over one shoulder. Krolia did not ask what had happened but her eyes were knowing. That night, and every night after, he was not surprised at how the Lord filled his dreams.

* * *

Denying the call of the Wild Hunt thrice is not done. Even if it were, Keith knows he would not be able to do it. Not when he knows what—and who—awaits him in the woods.

They rise with the sun, a concession that hunters can rarely afford. Maybe both of them ache to spend a few hours more together, even in sleep, because it will be a long time yet before they can reunite. Time has never been on the side of those who live in different realms.

Krolia hands him a fresh quiver and her knife. “I can’t,” he says, but she closes his fingers over the knife’s hilt.

She does not send him with more food than will hold for a single walking meal or any of the soft comforts humans prefer on long journeys. It wouldn’t be needed where he’s going. He loves her all the better for understanding that.

It takes him half a day to make it to the edge of the woods. Keith doesn’t pause as he crosses the boundary. Nothing happens. No clap of thunder, no caw of ravens taking flight, no burst of sunlight. For all that he’s spent half a lifetime imagining this moment, he doesn’t begrudge the lack of omens that accompany his crossing.

Power lightens his steps until he leaves no print upon the damp autumn ground. When he whistles to the wind, it caresses his cheek and pushes him onward, lovingly mischievous. “Lead me to him,” he tells it. Tells the waiting magic of the wood. “Lead me home.”

* * *

Early snow dusts his hair and scents the air with frost. It will not stick, not yet, but it’s a promise of what’s to come. The time for hunting is nearly over.

Keith grins and resettles his wings. Glossy feathers gleam like a splash of oil, all the colors of the rainbow contained in their black depths. Digging his talons into the willow bough, he waits for the Hunt to pass beneath him.

Years in this realm have shaped him into something that no one from his old human village could have imagined. Once he’d been a hunter, a trapper, a son of a strong human mother and a capricious fae father. Now he’s a raven godling. A hunter still, yes, and a trapper. But also a warrior, a trickster, a savior of realms.

Or, at least, he’ll be that last soon enough.

Thinking of the Lost Queen he’d met in the ruins of the Spring Court, he tightens his grip on his mother’s knife. _You must save us from the Hag,_ she’d told him then. _You are the only one who can_. _I keep us from ruin, but only just. You_ —

 _I only came for him_ , Keith said. By then he’d been hollowed out by this world. Left harder and leaner, if not quite crueler.

Rather than cowing, the Lost Queen had smiled in a way that was at once understanding and bitter. _Then you’ll have to reclaim him_. _The Hag has taken the Lord of the Hunt. But she will have to give him up if you win._

Patience keeps him steady upon the willow bough. He waits until he hears the call of the horn and the thunder of hooves and the chime of tack. Snow comes down more thickly. When the first of the elk herd passes below, their hooves leave gouging prints in the thin snow, exposing the raw earth beneath. The Wild Hunt comes after, driven onward by the horn, following instinct as much as prey. Keith ignores them, with their strangely human faces and eerily jointed limbs, in favor of the Lord who brings up their rear.

Unmounted, he keeps pace with the fae steeds. The antlers crowning his head are tall and bone white and magnificent. One of his arms has been replaced by a woodsung limb. Not quite the dark haired handsome youth of Keith’s memories. Stronger, fiercer, with scars that show how often the Hunt has led down darker paths. But still, after all of these years, the home that calls to Keith’s wild heart.

Wings flared, he drops from the willow and falls upon the Lord.

* * *

They collapse together into the furs of Keith’s nest. The Lord of the Hunt bears marks from their brutal fight in the woods—but then, so does Keith, and he revels in them as proof of his hard fought victory. Even now he claws his way atop the other male.

When finally he manages it, dark wings spread in a show of beauty and power. Flight feathers nearly brush the roof. The Lord’s breath catches and Keith barely resists the urge to preen.

“You’re mine, now,” Keith says. “You owe me your name.”

For a moment he thinks the Lord might resist. He remembers, distantly, when he was young and all too mortal and staring up at the inscrutable fae. The moment passes. “Shiro,” the Lord says. “My name is Shiro, little raven.”

“You remember me?”

Low rumbles drags up Keith’s spine as the Lord—as _Shiro_ —laughs. “Yes. How could I forget you when you kept trying to sneak over the border?”

Shame flushes Keith’s cheeks and he ducks his head. Foolish and besotted, he’d spent most of the years between his fifteenth and nineteenth birthdays trying desperately to catch a glimpse of the Lord of the Hunt. “You were always there to catch me,” he says. Not quite accusing.

“I was,” Shiro says. Both his hands find their way to Keith’s hips. The weight of them is oddly reassuring. Grounding. “And now you’ve caught me in turn.”

At the reminder, Keith dares a glance up. Those eyes—grey as a winter dawn—watch him with a predator’s ease. “Yes,” he whispers. Bravery allows him to lean down. To brush his lips against the strong line of Shiro’s jaw. “I have.”

If anyone were to ask, Keith would say he did not plan to end this first night mating on his furs. They are both bruised and scraped and raw. Years of distance lay between them. But even if he recalled his mother’s warning not to be cruel, Keith must allow that his time in the woods has made him foolish.

They kiss rough and hungry. Keith’s hands map broad planes of muscle and the downy softness of fur that rings Shiro’s shoulders like an elk’s ruff. He croons as he pets his fingertips through the white fur. In turn, Shiro bites at the tender jut of Keith’s collarbone until it bruises.

Perhaps an hour passes. Perhaps a year.

The man beneath him kept Keith in flight for many seasons, but now there’s no need to track the time by any measure but how many gasps he’s coaxed from those full lips. Keith grins wickedly—half feral—as he takes Shiro inside his body and hears the most sinful noise yet spill from Shiro’s mouth. It’s half a roar, half a growl, and all temptation. Uncertain but pleased, Keith rolls his hips and feels another half inch of cock slide into him.

Digging his talons into the broad chest beneath his hands is reflex. One he tries to temper as blood seeps from the punctures. But when he looks to Shiro’s face, he sees no anger, and the hands on his hips guide him into another leisurely undulation.

This is nothing like the mating of humans, he thinks, who are quick and furtive. It cannot be, when Keith is so small and Shiro is so massive. Something is giving inside him, making way for this steady invasion that will claim every part of him before the end. Thighs burn with the effort of keeping his descent slow. Purposeful. Easy. Half the time he can’t tell if Shiro’s hands are meant to support him or keep him moving down, down, down…

“Ohhh,” Keith moans. Bottomed out, he digs his talons in again like it will ground him against the overfullness. Too much. Instinct makes him lift his hips and drop back down. Lightning snakes across his skin and thunder roars in his bones.

Whatever this is, it isn’t pleasure, not like Keith knows it. This is not how it feels to eat the berries that grow in the forest, to watch the sun gleam off snowy mountain peaks, to hunt prey with his knife in hand. It’s something crueler and sweeter all at once. Keith is helpless against his need, chasing it with writhing hips and rising voice, knowing only that there’s something just out of his grasp.

“That’s it,” Shiro growls. Firelight gleams off his antlers, his skin, his bared teeth. “That’s it, little raven, take what you want.”

“Shiro.” The battle that started all of this feels far away. “Shiro.” Keith doesn’t care who wins anymore, only that he breaks through the tension cording all of his limbs and making his breath come in short punching gasps. “S-Shiro!”

Crooning low in his throat, Shiro brings a hand up to Keith’s face, cradling his entire cheek with one palm and pressing the thumb against his lower lip. It’s a sweet comfort.

Keith nuzzles into the touch. Doesn’t protest as Shiro pushes his thumb into Keith’s panting mouth. Closes his eyes as he takes in the weight of it on his tongue. Suckles at it and relishes the taste of copper and salt.

Hazily he opens his eyes and realizes that his hips have slowed to a languid roll. Deep and slow. Mimicking the way Shiro fucks his thumb into Keith’s mouth. Each shift emphasizes the way he’s been forced open and filled up. When he glances down, he can see the slight bulge of Shiro’s cock against his flat belly.

Too much. But, woods take him, not enough.

“Is this what you want, little raven?” Shiro asks. Vaguely, he’s aware of the Lord shifting beneath him. Feet planting against the furs and thighs brushing the sweat streaked column of his spine. The woodsung hand, still at his hip, tightens with bruising force. “Or should I give you what you _need_?”

The fae are too proud to beg. Keith is not fae. Not entirely. “Please,” he begs, “Please, Shiro.” Whatever he expects, it’s not for their positions to flip. The sudden depth rips a wail out of him that Shiro steals from his lips.

Riding on an edge that feels like all the best hunts, Keith allows his Lord to plunder him hard and deep and brutal until he can feel nothing but the burn of pleasure. Sweat streaks his skin and the feathers in his hair cling to his neck. When he breaks, it’s with a sound he didn’t quite know himself capable of.

Shiro drops closer then, pens him in with his larger body as he chases his own release. “Little raven,” he says. His big hands tangle in Keith’s hair. Despite the harsh rhythm of his body, his hands are still so gentle. “Little raven.”

“My name is Keith.”

Laughter, the kind that comes from a wild joy, catches in his throat as his words give Shiro that same breaking pleasure that so ruined Keith. He doesn’t bother to hide it. Presses kisses to every inch of the other man’s face that he can reach.

“You didn’t have to—” Shiro says. His big shoulders are trembling finely. Not from the exertion, but the emotion. The trust. The _love_. He hunches closer, all but crushing Keith beneath him like he wants to protect Keith from all the wicked things of the woods. As though they had not nearly torn each other apart hours before.

“I know.” Nuzzling against Shiro’s cheek, he adds, “This is the Wild Hunt. You caught me. Then I caught you. And what you catch, you keep.”

**Author's Note:**

> and they lived happily ever after being the disgustingly in love lords of the hunt the end. my own fae hell realm is [tweeter](https://twitter.com/akaiikowrites). still waiting on a 6'2" beefy lord who'll treat me right tho. lol.


End file.
